Indiana's On the Map: New Way to Access Labor Force Data

Indiana is now among the states whose data is accessible through OnTheMap version 2.2, a Web-based mapping application from the U.S. Census Bureau's Local Employment Dynamics program. OnTheMap is a powerful tool with many uses. Users can zoom in to get neighborhood data not available elsewhere or zoom out to regional labor markets that cross state boundaries.

This application, available at https://onthemap.ces.census.gov/, uses a standard Internet browser, but a high-speed connection is a must due to the large amount of data being processed. The data are useful (even if they seem a little old—2004 is the most current available), but because the interface is a little less than intuitive, some may overlook beneficial features. This article is somewhat of a mini-tutorial so you can get a jumpstart using this helpful tool.

Overlay Options

The first page of the website allows you to focus in on a basic geographic area. Once you're in the map interface, there are three ways to get data. Access these options by clicking the “Create/Change Overlay” button (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Overlay Options

Create Travel Sheds: Depending on if commute shed or labor shed is chosen, this profiles either residents who live in a selected location (e.g., where do people who live in Marion County work?) or workers employed within a selected location (e.g., where do people who work in the downtown Indianapolis 46204 ZIP Code live?).

Create Paired Area: This option analyzes a single home and workplace pair (e.g., how many Lawrence county residents commute to the city of Bloomington?).

Analyze Concentric Rings: Depending on if commute shed or labor shed is chosen, this creates profiles of residents or workers within three rings around a selected point using a user-defined radius (e.g., how do workers who live within two miles of the center of East Chicago differ from those who live within 5 miles or 10 miles?)

Selection Options

After you've selected an overlay, the next dialog box will ask you to define the selection area (among other things). Even though we're only going to look at layer selections in this article, the following four selection options are available, so users aren't necessarily limited to analyzing data for predefined geographies (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Selection Options

Layer Selection: Choose a layer type (such as counties, cities, townships or ZIP code tabulation areas) and then select a specific geographic unit on the map by dragging your mouse across it. *Tip: you need to drag your mouse across at least a portion of the geographic unit you want to select. Just clicking on it will not work.

Buffered Selection: Builds a buffer around a line you draw on the map (you specify the radius for the buffer in miles).

Circle Selection: Selects an area (using a radius you specify) around a point you select on the map

One of the improvements in this version of OnTheMap is that census blocks are used to define the selection area—excluding the freehand selection, which will continue to be defined at the block-group level.

Report Options

The same dialog box that asks you to define a selection area also wants you to specify a report type. The tables in this article provide the actual output from OnTheMap for various queries so you know what is available.

If you selected the travel shed overlay, you may choose between three different report options:

Shed Report: If labor shed is selected, this report indicates where workers who are employed in the selected area live. As shown in Table 1, more than 60 percent of people who worked in the downtown Indianapolis ZIP code 46204 in 2002 lived in Marion County, but that number dropped to 55 percent by 2004. If commute shed is selected, the report indicates where residents who live in the selected area are employed.

*All in Indiana unless otherwise notedSource: U.S. Census Bureau, using LED Origin-Destination Database

Area Profile Report: This report provides the characteristics of employed workers in the selected area. Figure 3 shows the map output for the Anderson and Fall Creek townships in Madison County. Table 2 provides the results of the associated area profile report, where we see that the percentage of residents employed in manufacturing dropped 2.5 percentage points between 2002 and 2004.

Note: Data are for the second quarter of each yearSource: U.S. Census Bureau, using LED Origin-Destination Database

If you selected either the paired area or concentric rings, the following reports are available:

Paired Area Report: If labor shed is selected, this report provides the number of workers that are employed in selection area #1 and live in area #2, as shown in Table 4. If commute shed is selected, it provides information on workers that reside in selection area #1 and work in area #2.

Table 4: Paired Area Report—Characteristics of Workers that Reside in Lawrence County and Commute to the City of Bloomington in Neighboring Monroe County

Workers Residing in Lawrence County

2004:2

Count

Share

All Jobs

17,884

100%

All Jobs (Private Sector Only)

14,853

100%

All Primary Jobs (Worker's highest paying job)

16,834

100%

All Primary Jobs (Private Sector Only)

14,012

100%

Residents of Lawrence County Working in the City of Bloomington

All Jobs

2,330

13%

All Jobs (Private Sector Only)

2,002

13.5%

All Primary Jobs (Worker's highest paying job)

2,203

13.1%

All Primary Jobs (Private Sector Only)

1,891

13.5%

Note: Data are for the second quarter of each yearSource: U.S. Census Bureau, using LED Origin-Destination Database

Concentric Circle Report: If labor shed is selected, this report provides information about people who work in each radius. If commute shed is selected, it provides employment information about those who reside in each radius, as shown for East Chicago in Table 5.

Note: Data are for the second quarter Source: U.S. Census Bureau, using LED Origin-Destination Database

Viewing the Results

After creating an overlay, all you will see on the map is the selection itself, which is a little unnerving because you think it didn't work. However, to see the distribution of the labor force or workforce, you can choose to display points, thermals or both underneath “Display Option.”

Point size is based on concentration of workers, while thermals show density using a workers per square mile calculation. The number of workers/jobs in each quarter-mile grid cell is averaged with the numbers from the eight adjacent cells and then converted to workers per square mile. The colors chosen for the thermal overlay make it a little difficult to see what is going on, so it is useful to use that layer in conjunction with the points layer by selecting the “Both” option. To see the actual legend breaks for a specific map, click the square next to “overlay key” in the legend in the lower left corner.

While the map gives a decent visual of commute and labor sheds, the real meat of this application is in the aforementioned reports, which will open up in a new window if you select the “Reports” option.

While a bit slow and a little clunky at first, OnTheMap may prove to be an indispensable resource for data you can't easily get anywhere else.

Rachel Justis, Managing Editor
Indiana Business Research Center, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University